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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25225147">from the other side of the veil</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixotisms/pseuds/quixotisms'>quixotisms</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(i guess), (mostly), Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Death, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Loss, M/M, Marauders, Moony - Freeform, One Shot, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), POV Remus Lupin, POV Third Person Limited, Padfoot - Freeform, Prongs - Freeform, Relationship Study, Sad Remus Lupin, Wormtail - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:07:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,781</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25225147</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixotisms/pseuds/quixotisms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sirius Black falls through the Veil, Remus Lupin is forced to grapple with both his complicated past with Sirius and his uncertain future alone.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, wolfstar - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>from the other side of the veil</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Remus Lupin had watched his life crumble away before his eyes many times before, but this was different.  Hit square in the chest by Bellatrix’s curse, Sirius fell backwards into the Veil.  His body seemed to lift, to hang in midair, to cling to its being for a fraction of a second.  </p><p>For a beautiful, desperate moment, it seemed to Remus that the whole world had emptied.  They were the only two people on Earth, he and Sirius, Moony and Padfoot, left there to grapple with their raw and gaping sorrow.  </p><p>And then Sirius was gone, turned to something less than dust.  Remus was powerless to stop it.  Sirius had been laughing-- <em> laughing </em>-- just seconds ago, and now there wasn’t a bit of him left to bury.  All the sound had died from the world, apart from the ringing in Remus’s ears.  It felt as if someone had cast a great Slowing Charm over the place, sending an eerie stillness out in waves from the dais.  He barely noticed Harry darting toward the Veil.</p><p>Remus couldn’t remember what he said to Harry, or to anyone, even a long while later.  What he did recall was the weight of it, of keeping the boy from running through the Veil after his godfather, of the choking heat inside his throat.  </p><p>He worked with quiet diligence to secure the others, but every atom inside him was numb to his surroundings.  Remus knew that he should have cared, should have felt something still while danger was present, but what happened in the Department of Mysteries thereafter was of little consequence to him.</p><p> </p><p>Some time after the events at the Ministry had unfolded, Remus found himself at 12 Grimmauld Place with nothing but time.  No one had come to Headquarters today-- not Tonks, not Kingsley nor Mad-Eye, not even Snape slinking around-- and there was only Kreacher for company.</p><p>Without knowing how he’d gotten there, Remus stood rocking on his heels in front of the door to Sirius’s childhood bedroom.  He was unable to cast away the expectation that Sirius would somehow be behind the heavy door, full of life and ardor, impatiently awaiting his arrival.</p><p>Remus opened the door to a ghostly silence.</p><p>Sirius wasn’t there-- of <em> course </em> Sirius wasn’t there, he was dead-- but it seemed as if he had just left.  The bedsheets were rumpled, half strewn aside.  Remus’s eyes flickered between the countless images on the walls.  He mostly noted motorcycles and girls, Muggle girls, strangely enough.  Sirius never had more than a shallow interest in women all his life.</p><p>Then Remus noticed the photograph.</p><p>It was of the four of them, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, back before the world as they’d known it had collapsed.</p><p>Images rushed into Remus’s mind, leaving sweetness on his tongue.  Once, long ago now, he was a Marauder.  A mirthless smile spread across his face as he thought of their reckless cruelty, their adolescent indolence.  They were boys once, just boys!-- who’d believed so wrongly that they had all the time in the world.  How sacred those moments were now, how close they felt all these years later.  </p><p>The memories came to Remus now in waves, like moths at a blistering light.  He was sick with the intensity of it and stumbled onto the creaking bed, holding the photograph in both hands.  What he wouldn’t give to put a shattered Time-Turner to use, to travel back to one of those listless summer afternoons and shoulder-shake himself.  Why didn’t he know not to take it all for granted?  </p><p>Where had he been all his life?  Why did he let the world swallow him up to the dregs, day after day after day?  How did he waste his youth-- bit by bit, or all at once?  Remus wracked his brain for the moment in which he had stopped paying attention.  But there was nothing to find, no starting point for this great and terrible arrogance.</p><p>Remus looked at the photograph again, tracing their outlines with his thumb.  He was young once himself.  Scarred and broken, even then.  But he’d had Sirius-- oh Merlin, his sweet, capricious Sirius, equally capable of cruelty and kindness.  </p><p>He shivered as he thought of their quiet nights at Hogwarts searching the Map for an empty corridor, a nook in some abandoned corner of the castle. . . </p><p>Sirius had been so youthful then, quick to laugh and anger, his grey eyes alight with fervor.  For some reason, what Remus thought of most of all was Sirius’s smooth touch, impossibly gentle, tracing Remus’s scars as they lay together beneath the sheets.  Their hands fit so well together.  Falling in love with Sirius was the easiest thing he’d done.</p><p>But those days were over.  Neither one of them had been young for a long time.</p><p>Remus could never forgive himself for those years Sirius sat alone in his Azkaban cell, turning waxy and brittle.  How effortless it had been then to turn his back on him when Sirius’s guilt was the simplest explanation, when his own grief was so fresh.  But how could he have known?</p><p>Remus knew his own passivity was to blame.  He despised himself for it, always had, but never found the strength to change.  He’d learned long ago to accept each unsavory hand that fate dealt him.  It was easier that way, to be empty, because nothing could shake you.</p><p>He had always prided himself on the way he could tackle a Boggart.  Fear did not take hold of him because he had expected the worst all his life.  Was that what made him a Gryffindor?  He wasn’t sure.  He never felt like much of one.</p><p>The gaps in memory, the nightmares, the pain of transformation-- they were nothing, nothing, because they were wholly anticipated evils.  This was different.  Fate had ripped Sirius away and brought him back again, only to take him forever just when they’d rekindled their relationship.  </p><p>Precious few were the nights they’d spent together in Grimmauld Place, avoiding both other Order members and the house’s many curses.  They relished their time together: it was a second chance at something real, and they both knew it.  But even then, it was bittersweet.</p><p>A prisoner Sirius had been in Azkaban, and a prisoner he’d stayed in Grimmauld Place.  He <em> hated </em> that house, loathed it.  Sirius had never been the type to hide himself away while others took part in the action.  But he didn’t live a day past his own chance at escape.</p><p>It was then that Remus wept, finally.  Had he even cried for Sirius since that night in the Department of Mysteries?  His grip on the photograph slackened and it fell to the floor.</p><p>Remus cried until he couldn’t any longer.  Gasping and hiccuping, he fell back fully-dressed onto the bed, curving his body across the comforter and burying his scarred face in the sheets.  He tried to find Sirius’s scent, warmth and smoke and dog and leather.  Padfoot, Padfoot, Padfoot.  There had to be something of him left here on Earth.</p><p>The sheets did not smell like anything at all.</p><p>“Will I see you again?” Remus whispered into the blankets, nauseous with his grief.</p><p>He knew what people said about the Veil, about the murmuring voices of the dead.  He had fantasized for days now about standing in front of it, listening for Sirius.  Honestly, what he really dreamt of was climbing through it himself.</p><p>But he needed to make himself useful.  Sirius could not, would not die in vain.  Not after he had given his life to a waste.</p><p>Maybe they would meet again someday, Moony and Padfoot.  Maybe there was a place beyond the Veil, somewhere better than here, and when his time came he would join Sirius there.</p><p>But Remus found it difficult to have faith in that.  Privately, he doubted the whispering of the Veil.  He didn’t hear a thing himself when he was in the Department of Mysteries.  Perhaps he was just afraid of the inexplicable.</p><p>Remus lay on the bed for a very long time.  Then the noise came, bit by bit.  Voices, familiar voices, spread across the house.  As they grew louder, he sat up on the edge of the bed and snatched up his wand.</p><p>“Someone in there?” said Tonks.  The door squeaked open.</p><p>Remus glanced up at her from the side of the bed.</p><p>“Oh,” she said.  “Remus.”  She smiled hesitantly at him.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you w--”</p><p>“It’s all right,” he said.  “Really, I’m fine.  I was just looking at some old photos.”</p><p>“Well,” she said, stepping unsteadily into the room.  “We were thinking, Mad-Eye and Arthur and Molly and I, Harry’ll be going home today and-- well, maybe we should talk to that family of his.  They can’t treat him like they have been, not after--”  Her voice hung in the air.</p><p>“That’s a great idea,” Remus said, quick to break the cavernous silence between them.  “I should’ve done something much sooner myself.”</p><p>“You’ll come, then?” said Tonks, brightening.</p><p>“Of course.”  He forced himself to smile back.</p><p>“Well, I’ll just be downstairs, then,” she said, backing out of the room.  She stumbled in the doorframe, nearly tripping and falling, and gave a little laugh as she went.</p><p>Remus watched her go.  Then his eyes drifted back to the photograph on the floor.  Moony and Padfoot.</p><p>He got up without thinking, without even placing the photo back where he had found it.  He walked numbly towards the door, feeling as though he were being led by an external force.  The voices downstairs were chattering away, lively as ever, as if they had not lost Sirius too.  Plates clattered about and furniture creaked across the ancient floors.  </p><p>Remus wanted to shout at them, to scream, to force them to think about his pain.  He didn’t know how he was supposed to bear it all by himself.  He’d lost them all, all three of the other boys in the photograph.  It made no difference to him now whether it was to death or betrayal.  The Marauders were no more.  And here the world was carrying on, unfazed, unbothered, uncaring.</p><p>But he knew he would have to speak with the Order and smile as if everything were all right.  So he went on walking, swallowing his anger and devastation, straining a mild expression onto his face.  He allowed the world to drain him, as he always had, as he always would.  Remus allowed himself to be led into the noise, away from this desolate quiet, away from the last remnants of the man whom he had loved and wanted to hate and loved again, into the next chapter.</p><p><br/>
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thanks for reading!  this was my first fanfic, so I'd love to hear any feedback :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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